Yikes! Shouldn't that maple syrup being going the other direction? From the plastic bottle to the carafe? If they're recycling the maple syrup, what else are they recycling? Don't ask about those o-rings, Ann!

In any particular place the food might be fabulous or it might be vile.

The best place for burgers where I'm at is a little place down the road that looks worse than that does. The tile is old and dingy, the curtains don't fit the windows... the walls in the front are covered with pictures of firefighters and popes and all the current local ministers... the walls in the add-on are covered with framed Rodeo posters. The furniture and booths are vintage 1960s chrome and vinyl. But don't mistake me that this offers some redeeming quaintness.

The green-chili cheese burgers are incredible and available in beef, buffalo, or ostrich... with or without green-chili, onion rings and fries.

The only place with better burgers is a resort grill across the lake from my parents, which does qualify as quaint. Mushroom and Swiss, fries in a basket, lake depth maps on the wall, and leeches or night-crawlers in the cooler next to the cans of pop.

Sleazy dive? From what I can see, it looks like just a common small truck stop style diner. Sleazy is a relative term that can best be defined by it's essential nature. If that happens to be in West Virginia then it is a very fine, five-star gem of a restaurant.

I'm posting from a very large computer network, and for some reason this beast has not been responding well to my corrections.

I understand the Professor's need to connect with good everyday american folk after so many years of constant intellectual stimulation from the Internetati. These regular folks will accept her without expecting that she know everything about everything. After a week among the regular folks her vision will return and she will see all the colors without that irritating purple tint.

It is good to get out and see what it is like on the other side. James the Fifth, king of Scotland, often disguised himself and traveled about the land to see how the common people were treated. He was sometimes called the poor man's king because he would travel the countryside disguised as a poor farmer.

I just had a second thought. If this is the fancy restaurant available for the guests late supper and breakfast, than what did the Motel room look like? The chocolat on the pillow would be a Three Musketeers bar, and the mattress would slope everybody together into the middle. I remember staying there once, and the family who ran the place had a shrine to the cow god in the back office giving off incense smells, that at least covered up the other smells.We need to all chip in and buy the Professor a Marriott gift card.

Very good to see that Prof. Althouse isn't too stuck up to have lunch in a sleazy dive. Some of 'em have great food. Lankford's Grocery and Bubba's Burger Shack here in Houston are two great sleazy dives. You might even see U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur in Lankford's every now and then.

The success of the diners are not due to the great menue or the food quality (like a fabulous Sonic drive-in?), but rises from the "feel" of eating in the warm, noisey kitchen as a member of an extended family. In other words its comforting for lonely single people.The waitress will greet you like a family member and enjoy cooking up your order at the kitchen stove 10 feet away while you sit at the kitchen table and watch. The little child in us all is affirmed by this social interaction of shared preparation and eating of basic family food together.

I could tell you of hot dog stands that rival the great restaurants of this country...and many of the chefs and staff of those elite fine dining establishments know where those hot dog stands are and frequent them late night too.

traditional guy is right. And by the way, the very best in cusine is a play on lots of factors including ofactory manipulation and memory to produce a memorable experience. You can spend $500 on dinner for two for that, but there are many places that deliver a comparable experience for $20, sometimes less.

That place doesn't look sleazy to me. I don't see anyone passed out on the floor or obviously under the influence of narcotics. Though you can get sometimes get good meals at some of those places too, if you can stand the scenery.

In fact, it looks like the sort of place where you can get a great meal of bacon and eggs, with a side of toast and good strong coffee, 24 hours a day.

In fact, it looks like the sort of place where you can get a great meal of bacon and eggs, with a side of toast and good strong coffee, 24 hours a day.

And ten years from now it will probably still be in business and be just as comfortable. Whereas the cafe Althouse visited in America's heartland will probably be out of business in a few years. Places like that don't look so nice once they get normal wear and tare. Someone will build a newer place that looks more in the fashion or the unconventional seating pattern will turn out to be unconventional because it was unprofitable.

The waitress looks like she's got a low center of gravity and the ability to survive any number of shocks and dislocations. Bad marriage, lousy tippers, extra shift on Sunday: bring it on, motherfucker....She goes home with aching arches and the smell of grease in her hair. And for all that she is probably 20% less pissed off about America than the average Obama voter.

The waitress looks like she's got a low center of gravity and the ability to survive any number of shocks and dislocations. Bad marriage, lousy tippers, extra shift on Sunday: bring it on, motherfucker....She goes home with aching arches and the smell of grease in her hair. And for all that she is probably 20% less pissed off about America than the average Obama voter.

Clearly, friends, the professor is using the second and third definitions. Surely there is no disagreement that the food is inexpensive, if not of the lowest quality, and the establishment itself is of a ramshackle nature. One might also contend that the diner is shabby and dirty, as well, if not tawdry.

Yes, Virginia, there is a malaise. Just as surely as the earth moves from the sun in winter, there is a sadness that marks and scars our journey. We idle in traffic, take circuitous detours, and do the final fifty miles on broken springs before we reach our final destination--a sudden plunge off a high cliff. All of this pisses me off, but I blame the wretched infrastructure not on America but on God.... I admire the waitress for the patient way she recycles cheap syrup to put on indigestible pancackes. That's a metaphor for something. It's not the journey or even the destination that's important. What gives our trip significance is the rest stop and the tip we leave behind.

Orange paper could be menues such as that which is shown in the foreground or at least I assume that it is a menu. There is a picture at the top of the menu and underneath it looks to show 'Take a Drive Along America's Main Street

hi professorsorry i didn t have anything yesterdayto say about your road trip but i vebeen feeling a bit under the weatherwhich is understandable as i usuallyam under something unlessi m hopping on tommy s keyboardtommy is the boy whose computer i usei always say that for newbiesanyway someone mentioned that i might likesuch a dive sleazy as it is depicted abovebut i ve got to tell you i never likedsuch places even when i was a humangeez i have to explain it over and over thati have the transmigrated soul of a professorand in my day there weren t shi shi littlecafes such as you see today near the state uno there weren tmost of the places looked likethe above sleazy dive because we werein the midwest not to mentionmost people students and faculty smokedwhich added to the trans fat i got in these dinersis one reason i m a cockroach todayi don t get to dives like this much today anywayas they just aren t around harvard sq that muchbut the big reason i have to avoid them in mypresent configuration is that even though theyhold things together with duct tape andemploy pudgy help and seem a little grimyfrom all the wear n tear if not cleanlinessthose plastic pails and the general lookof the place tells me they probably makeliberal use of the dreaded i wordwhich cannot be mentioned in polite companyalong with sarin and mustard gas sorry to sayjust think along with the ketchup on youronion rings there s probably a bit of chlorinatedorganic neurotoxin that won t do you any goodand don t ask what it s supposed to do to mei really prefer those cute little cafes you usuallytake pictures in as they are usually very green yaybut frankly i don t have to go out much what withmom here at the house being a fabulousand sloppy french cook ooh la laand jayne a restaurant that doesn t serve wineis ipso facto a dive unless proven innocenthad to get a little legalese in for the sakeof professor a s reputation as a law blogger

I'm going to ask, because it's a pretty decent setup: is that a diiner ideally positioned in a rest stop along the road to serfdom? Forgive me for the embarrasingly bad self-link, I could not help myself, although I am in a program now and the people there are very supportive. . .

I have to laugh when they talk about the clean diners. My ex-mother in law was the public health nurse and one of her duties was to inspect the cleanliness of the restaurants in the county. The cleanest restaurant was the lunch counter in the Kresge's 5 and 10 cent store and one of the ones that came closest to failing was the best restaurant in town. She was surprised at how clean the diners were by comparison to the restaurants.